Excerpts From Cuomo Address: Preparing for the 21st Century

Published: January 7, 1988

Following are excerpts from Governor Cuomo's State of the State Address to the Legislature yesterday, as transcribed by The New York Times through the facilities of Channel 13.

In the brief time that we have this afternoon, I can mention of course only a few of the programs and plans that are set out in the extended message that I've already delivered to you. But before doing even that, I'd like to share with you some of the fundamental ideas that underlie, and that I think justify, my proposals.

After 210 years of progress and struggle, we in the Empire State believe deeply in our government. We've proven that honestly and prudently managed, our government can be an instrument by which we improve the conditions of our people's lives. We can relieve their suffering, enlarge their opportunities, even empower their dreams.

For two centuries we've done that affirmatively, aggressively and proudly, through periods of calm and periods of near chaos, through seasons of plenty and years of depression, through ordinary times and spectacularly extraordinary times.

In the last several years, you men and women of the Legislature have refined this commitment, by impressing upon it what have now become two very familiar principles. The first is the simple and powerful idea that we began with on Jan. 1, 1983, the idea of mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens fairly, intelligently, for the greater good of all. We've called it family.

And you, the Legislature, showed us how it works when you called upon the rest of the state to help a troubled western New York, when you asked New Yorkers who had homes to come to the assistance of the homeless, when you asked those who were well to care for those who were ill, those who were comfortable to help hundreds of thousands of inner-city and rural poor.

... We have, in effect, produced a new kind of dynamic bipartisanship that shuns labels and shibboleths in favor of balance, in favor of reasonableness, in favor of principled compromise.

We've adopted, really, a new realism that demonstrates government can be both progressive and pragmatic, that we can insist on all the government we need, while limiting ourselves to only the government we need. A Record Of Achievement

Now these ideas, all together, have produced an extraordinary record of accomplishment over the last five years: our largest tax cuts ever, billions and billions of dollars of them; half a million people living at or below the poverty line dropped from our tax roles altogether; balanced budgets; reduced debt; reduced borrowing; more jobs; nearly 70,000 people off the A.F.D.C. roles as we replaced welfare with work.

We've made huge new investments in education, in economic development projects, in our infrastructure, in agriculture, in our environment, in housing.

We have a prescription drug program for the elderly and a unique program for the homeless.

So the record shows that the basic principles have worked very well indeed. Now we must apply them again. Now it's time to build the future. . . .

Now consider just some of the opportunities and the problems that stand in the way.

Over the last five years, as you know, we have put in place the foundation for an exciting new era of economic resurgence in the state. But at the same time, New York is influenced, to a great extent, by a national economy that we all know is troubled. We have become a debtor nation, out-bought, out-produced, out-traded, falling further and further behind vigorous new competition and we appear to be without a clear national plan for the future. The Perils That Lie Ahead

But as a state, we have our own ominous failings. We have raised up great universities, perhaps the greatest in the nation. But each year, thousands of our children drop out of school before they have learned to read and write. And others graduate still illiterate.

And ladies and gentlemen, unless we act, you and I, many more of today's youth, the work force of the 21st century, will not be able to do the work of the 21st century.

On the one hand, we're astonished by the science that gives us an exotic ability to cooperate in the creation of human life in ways not imagined a couple of decades ago. But at the same time, we are terrorized by the spread of a disease that every day infects more of us, every day kills more of us, with no cure. We're told today that in our state, this year, more than 1,000 children will be born to die before they have barely learned to live, doomed by AIDS - a thousand a year.

We have spent billions upon billions of dollars of our people's wealth to erect public buildings that shelter us, that educate us, that inspire us. But as we approach our next century, more than half a million of our families lack adequate housing. And thousands go homeless, seeking shelter against the elements like the people of primitive times.

We've been blessed with majestic mountain ranges in our splendid north country and Hudson Valley, with lakes as great as seas, with magnificent rivers, and beaches, and forests, and rich plains where food can be grown.

But now we're poisoning God's gifts with the discards of a thoughtless life style, contaminating our water, our land and our air.

[ A child in the audience is heard talking. ]

We're raising children who are too talkative. That's not progress. I've done that for 30 years.

[ Laughter and applause. ]

But we're threatening to make our environment less hospitable to life in the 21st century than it has ever been before. The Decade Of the Child

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe our challenge is to overcome the problems that stand between us and a future that realizes even more of our vast potential.

And to accept that challenge of building the future, we must start where the future always starts: with children.